Root causes of borderline personality disorder

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http://www.optimumperformanceinstitute.com/bpd-program/root-causes-of-bpd/

Genetic and Biological Indicators

Perhaps one of the most compelling arguments for the role of genetics in borderline personality disorder comes from a large-scale Norwegian study of identical twins that indicated a heritability estimate of 42 percent, as published in Psychiatric Genetics. The study also indicated that the chromosome with the highest linkage rate was chromosome 9. This may indicate a direct familial link and the distinct possibility of BPD being passed down genetically.

Environmental Causes

Childhood events as well as social and cultural surroundings play large roles in personality development and may also serve to facilitate the development of a personality disorder. Unstable family relationships, childhood neglect or abandonment, and exposure to intense and chronic stress and fear as a child seem to play a role in people developing BPD down the road. Early relationships help to form the person you become and what you believe to be normal.

Risk Factors

While it is not completely understood what exactly causes borderline personality disorder and why some people develop the disorder and others don’t, most experts agree on certain risk factors increasing the odds for someone to develop BPD. These risk factors include:

Childhood abuse
Brain abnormalities
Direct relative with a mental health disorder
Hereditary predisposition
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I’ve often wished I had an identical twin who grew up separate from me so I’d have some idea how much of my mental illness in hereditary and how much environmental. I like your post. It addresses the nature/nurture controversy in an intelligent way.

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I have a older sister that I’ve been distant from since teenage years that carries some of the same traits as me. Unfortunately there is a religious/political iron wall that makes it impossible to discuss these things. It’s a shame.

Thanks! There are so many convoluted articles out there with a lot of biased psychobable that confuse more than inform.

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I know I’m a kvetch (sometimes), but I have to do this.

First, the Optimum Performance Institute in Woodland Hills (where this article came from) has a very shakey rep in the professional psychiatric community in LA. Families from disgustingly tony Calabasas and Malibu spray $30K a month to sequester their troublesome, mostly drug-abusing, oppositional-defiant, problem-children adolescents and young adults there in what amounts – according to several I know – to be playpen with a few est and Landmark Forum (look those up) types messing with their minds. (This sort of thing is common around LA, as well as New York.) The place does, however, specialize in BPD treatment, which makes it a magnet because so many places don’t. (BPD is exceedingly difficult to deal with and often toxicly stressful for those who try.)

Second, the study says, “This may indicate a direct familial link and the distinct possibility of BPD being passed down genetically.” Which may be true, but does not eliminate numerous other etiological (roughly “causal”) possibilities.

Third, I was not able to find this study, and I know how to find stuff like this. (It’s my job.) I have concentrated a lot of my attention on BPD for more than 25 years. If this study was “out there,” I’m pretty sure I’d know about it.

Fourth, the article says (correctly) that “Childhood events as well as social and cultural surroundings play large roles in personality development and may also serve to facilitate the development of a personality disorder.” In fact, this is exactly what mental health pros see in the developmental histories of the vast majority of BPD cases.

Fifth, millennial era research strongly suggests that BPD is a complex set of dysfunctional ego defenses put together in an attempt to deal with PTSD induced in early life and/or adolescence… which makes the etiology of BPD similar in some ways to the etiology of sz.

Sixth, almost all BPD pts I have interviewed are schizmatic on a polarity of unconscious terror of invasion and abuse here and unconscious terror of abandonment and isolation there… which makes them very much like sz pts, albeit with schemes of functioning that often “work” pretty well so long as they are not unduly stressed or substance-abusing.

In fact, it appears to me that there are a few people participating on this forum who display florid BPD characteristics, though such behaviors are easily confused with the disinhibition that results from binge drinking and/or drug abuse.

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https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Chromosome+9:+linkage+for+borderline+personality+disorder+features&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=VnGgVe-zM-KjyAPGm4O4Cg

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Didn’t we just do a grind on Chromosome 9 and BPD a few days ago? I think what I wrote then is that the exogenous stressors have to be there to make the genetics go epigenetic. Which makes it just like sz. Unless the genetics are “intense,” a lack of stress is unlikely to flip the boat over.

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I only know one person with a diagnosis of Borderline. As I understand it, she fits the bill quite nicely. She is quite proud of her shiny diagnosis, which I find…odd.

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I have found myself to be a chameleon often. Environmental factors were a large part; moving to a different part of the country, changing jobs, fatherhood etc…
Social conformity.
I don’t know, I see ourselves as constantly changing depending on the direction of our lives and who we are interacting with.
Self is a tricky thing. Can any of us truly judge ourselves in a way that is not biased to our ego?
I’d like to think so but …

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Um I probably have this. I’m prob not bipolar it makes sense now.

How do you describe it? I’ve got it under control now.

I think that’s what I’ll tell my psychiatrist I have at the next appointment. I think he knows.

I know I was hyper aware and had quirks was not moody but brooding a lot and very individualistic plus the fear of being insane set me off and they kind of reinforced that pattern by mistreating and mislabeling me I assume. The abilify and stuff depersonalized me early on but it numbed me out enough to deal with daily stress and confusion. I’m thinking I have always had BPD tho it could be genetic my moms first label was BPD but she never got help…does this make any sense could I possibly be borderline I don’t want to be…,

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My ex wife was an abusive Borderline - I always thought that I possibly had traces of BPD myself, but my current therapist does not think so.

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This applies to me as well but I’ve never been dx’ed it…bipolar ptsd but I’m assuming sza from everything I’ve been reading. I have an upcoming appt. so we’ll see.

I don’t know to what extent the criteria the for bpd is but I wouldn’t stress it @StarryNight.

I read your story…I’m sorry. I’ve had similar experiences and I hope you can get somewhere that you can feel safe and stabilized. Are you still working?

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Was she diagnosed? I suspect my ex of that as well.

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@Wave @StarryNight @firemonkey @anon40540444

My first and third wives were card carriers. I was so co-dependent with (and sexually addicted to) the third one that I focused a lot of my study and hands-on experience into that dx. I found all manner of experts from Randi Kreger (whose Stop Walking on Eggshells is the portal for most of the mystified) through John Preston, Robert Friedel, Theo Millon (who wrote the first drafts of the Axis II sections in the DSM III and IV) and a gaggle of personality theory experts, the dense but ever so insightful Otto Kernberg and his #1 student Bill Meissner. I wrote long papers for school and read them to bored audiences waiting to read their own papers.

What I know now after more than 25 years of eyeballing them at very close range and allowing them to chew on my legs is that they’re terrified to their very cores of being abused and equally terrified of being left alone. They are caught in an awful trap of being damned if they do and damned if they don’t. And they’re pretty much just “binge schizophrenics” who can snap back into ego strength (after they discharge their terror-fueled rage for a while) in a way the true (unmedicated) schizophrenic cannot.

One can learn to sit with them, but one will need a lot band aids during the learning process.

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check :white_check_mark:

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Read the lyrics. Fitting.